The Snowed-In Prison Workout Plan

Four twenty-or-so minute workout cycles, relayed to us by Mark Merchant, our go-to fitness guy and co-owner of As One Fitness in New York City. He recommends you shorten your workout cycle while winter lingers (he himself does it) — just because it packs in a lot of workout and makes you feel great, but doesn't take so long (which is hard to slog through when you've got the winter blues). Do the first two on, say, Monday and Tuesday. Take a day or two. Then do the other pair. Take whatever is left in the week. Take five second breaks between each set. Do it again and again and again and again.

Repeat the cycle, each time upping the number of reps by one, until you hit ten; this is called "laddering." Then ladder all the way back down. If this gets too easy for you, feel free to add a pair of soup cans as some extra weight, or a pair of gallon jugs filled with water.

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Cycle Four

Repeat the cycle, each time decreasing the number of skips by 50 and the number of strength workout reps by five. (So next would be 200 skips and 20 squat-jumps.) Get down to fifty and five. Then go all the way back up.